Carl Johansson - Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife, 1894
Regular price €2.900Carl Johansson (1863–1944) Sweden
Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife, 1894
oil on board
signed Carl Johansson Puerto Orotava Tenerifa -94
unframed 21.5 x 33 cm (8 1/2 x 13 in)
framed 32 x 43 cm (12 5/8 x 16 7/8 in)
Condition:
Gracefully aged over more than a century, the surface shows a fine pattern of vertical craquelure consistent with its age. The colors remain bright and clear, and the painting is ready to hang.
Essay:
This small oil painting on board (21.5 x 33 cm) is a rare early work by Swedish landscape painter Carl Johansson (1863–1944). Painted during the artist’s 1894 travels to the Canary Islands, it depicts a sunlit coastal view in Puerto de la Orotava, Tenerife (present-day Puerto de la Cruz).
Johansson’s approach in this tropical scene is markedly different from the style of his later, more celebrated Nordic landscapes, making this painting a true rarity in his oeuvre. Just a few years before, Johansson had been in Paris absorbing the innovations of the French Impressionists, and their influence shines through here. His brushwork is loose and confident, capturing the intense Atlantic light and lush vegetation of Tenerife with lively, immediate strokes. The color palette is unusually luminous: warm golden tones of sun and earth are offset by dashes of cool blues and violets — a clear nod to the techniques of Monet and Pissarro that inspired the young artist. The overall impression is one of vivid atmosphere and spontaneity, as Johansson revels in the exotic scenery far from his native Sweden.
Such early works from Johansson’s journeys abroad are exceedingly scarce. Decades after this piece was painted, the Swedish Artists’ Association (Svenska Konstnärernas Förening) held a retrospective of Johansson’s work in Stockholm in 1941, and notably included a handful of paintings from his 1894 Tenerife sojourn. The exhibition catalogue listed pieces titled “Strand” (“Beach”) and “Hamnen i Puerto-Orotava” (“Harbor in Puerto Orotava”) among those on display. It remains uncertain whether the present painting was one of the works exhibited, but its subject and inscription align suggestively with those entries, hinting that this could indeed be one of the rare Tenerife scenes that so captivated audiences at the retrospective.
For the collector or connoisseur, this delightful Puerto Orotava painting offers a unique glimpse into a formative chapter of Carl Johansson’s artistic journey. It stands as both a beautiful, sunlit coastal composition in its own right and a fascinating historical artifact — an early testament to Johansson’s exploratory spirit and his embrace of Impressionist color and light.
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